


recitativo

by hyperphonic



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, anakin is doing his best (it's just not very good), good and pure and honestly not as sad as one would expect, now that's what i call force ghosts, padme thinking about the weather a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 12:15:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15267300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyperphonic/pseuds/hyperphonic
Summary: She never does get to teach the little life in her womb how to weaponize patience, never gets to teach her twins how to braid gold into their hair to welcome autumn in, or watch Anakin lead them through the same lightsaber forms he’d loved so much.However, what Padmédoesget to do is watch as her children tear through the galaxy with all the force of springtime monsoons in the lake country and bring their father home.





	recitativo

**Author's Note:**

> **working title:** Padmé, into the mic: all the men in my life are idiots  
>  **for:** maddy, happy (belated) birthday doot, i love you more than the moon and stars  
>  **so uh, excuse me???:** remember, it's not the size, it's how you use it.
> 
>  
> 
> (also i need to rework my disclaimer because while i still don't own shit, i did manage to break my casual sex friday mug, so REALLY i don't have ANYTHING)

Padmé remembers the way summer rain had smelled on Naboo. It hangs in her nose as she walks the cool halls of the Senate, keeping a vigil broken only by the occasional stir of life from within her womb. The clouds of Coruscant glide lazily overhead, and she imagines Anakin’s face in them as she paces, caught somewhere between wanting and wandering, every inch a woman in a cage. Padmé is no stranger to waiting, knows it’s company well, wields it as a strategic tool sharper than any lightsaber in the grand arena of galactic politics. Patience, properly honed, can topple any empire; a lesson Padmé hopes to pass on to the little life she feels blooming in the space beneath her diaphragm.

On Naboo, the seasons had changed with as much flourish as the people who observed them styled their clothing. Late summer swept into early autumn with sharp air and golden filigree woven into the hair of every woman in the palace. Padmé remembers the intricate patterns well; practices them on the ends of her hair as Anakin doses beside her, one arm over her waist and his brow furrowed even in sleep. He loves her, the fact as strong and true as the way autumn light had lit the foliage of Varykino up gold each autumn morning. She seeks solace in that certainty each time he ducks out of her flat, broad shoulders slumping forward with some weight too terrible to share in the few quiet moments they managed to steal together.

She loves him too. Always has, though perhaps when the emotion had first found its roots in the ever shifting sands of Tatooine it had been a more platonic kind of love, a thought that Padmé entertains as she takes her tea on the balcony one early Autumn morning. The seasons on Coruscant do not change with the same kind of sweeping grandeur as they do on Naboo, and were it not for the few perennial plants she’d managed to bring with her from her own estate, Padmé is sure she wouldn’t know where in the year they even were. The days drag on, her stomach grows, and the petals start to drop from her small, transplanted garden.

Anakin’s presence in her bed goes from infrequent to nonexistent, and though Padmé desperately tries not to notice the way his robes grow inkier and inkier each time she sees him her throat still closes up each time he leaves. Like the plants on her balcony that now stand in a corona of their own fallen leaves, Padmé watches Anakin die as the days steadily grow shorter (and each night darker). She never does get to teach the little life in her womb how to weaponize patience, never gets to teach her twins how to braid gold into their hair to welcome autumn in, or watch Anakin lead them through the same lightsaber forms he’d loved so much.

However, what Padmé  _ does  _ get to do is watch as her children tear through the galaxy with all the force of springtime monsoons in the lake country and bring their father home. Anakin sits beside her as they watch the ensuing celebration, throat almost certainly too tight to speak as his eyes decode the braids set so intricately into her hair.

“I’m sorry.” He finally tries, eyes downcast as their daughter leans in to whisper something to the smuggler she’d fallen so wholeheartedly for (Padmé thinks she’s quite glad Anakin missed that particular exchange).

“I know.” The Queen turned Senator tugs her husband into her side, and thinks that maybe ( _ just maybe _ ) this was how they were supposed to be together all along.

Ben Solo has Anakin’s hair, Leia’s eyes, and absolutely  _ none _ of the tempering qualities Padmé had hoped to pass onto the boy. In fact, it would seem the  _ only  _ quality of hers that manifests even slightly in his dark countenance is an aptitude for dramatic clothing, and the set of his shoulders when walking into battle. She loves him, in a way that surprises her even more than the fearsome love that had sprung up for her children had. He is broken from the start, wide eyed and all but defenseless against the darkness that curls in the corners of his mind, and it breaks Padmé’s heart as only Anakin had before.

Neither of them can reach him, and Padmé watches in horror as the beautiful summer boy slips further and further beneath dark water, eyes glued only on his grandfather’s mangled helmet. Anakin tears himself apart, eyes wild at the edges each time Ben begs for guidance, and it’s all Padmé can do to keep herself centered as she threads her fingers through his hair.

“History will not repeat itself.” She whispers with a surprising amount of conviction even as they watch their grandson raze a village to the ground on Jakku. History  _ cannot  _ repeat itself, Padmé thinks, cheek pressed to Anakin’s hair and heart in her throat.

When Padmé watches her grandson brought all but to his knees by the mind of one sandy scavenger girl, she knows that his trajectory has been irrevocably altered. The girl,  _ Rey _ , born of downed Star Destroyers and sands just as unforgiving as those on Tatooine, throws Ben from his orbit and staunchly (albeit, unknowingly) places herself at the center of it. It is then, as Rey dismantles the armor that had been Kylo Ren with practiced hands and a determination born of a life spent answering to masters, that Padmé finally breathes.

Spring on Naboo had always been an event that bordered on violent. Thick, wet storms would tear down from the mountain passes to drive winter from the valley with howling winds and rain so thick you couldn’t see through it. Padmé remembers the days spent holed up deep within Varykino well, fingers pressed to cool glass as she’d watched winter be beat brutally away. As quickly as they came, the storms would peter out, only leaving snow in the most sheltered corners of the courtyard, and a pervasive smell of damp soil and grass just beginning to grow in their wake.

When Rey looks to her grandson, tears in her eyes and the drum of battle still wild in her veins Padmé recognizes that same kind of power. The second his name falls from her lips, little more than a whisper, what little debris had remained of Kylo Ren stood no chance in the face of such spring wind. Anakin exhales beside her, knuckles nearly white where his fingers had curled around her own, and in the trembling silence that follows as Ben watches Rey break atmo on Crait, Padmé thinks she smells damp soil.

  
  



End file.
